I attended a new networking meeting before last Christmas with a good friend of mine Mike Preston. Before going into the meeting we agreed try out an experimental networking idea of mine as follows;
# Work the room separately, but keep each other in sight
# At the end of our conversation with people we meet, state;
"I'm enjoying the event and there are some great people here worth knowing. One chap really worth getting to know is Mike Preston, he is that chap over there (pointing to Mike).
Mike is one of the most successful sales and marketing trainers in the
Make your excuses and then move on leaving the person you were talking too free to consider going to your "Referral Buddy". In turn Mike worked the room making referrals for me using a similar approach.
When Mike and I tried this idea very loosely on just the one occasion, we found it worked extremely well for both of us. We both received some great contacts, some of whom were very keen to introduce themselves to us (wonder why!!).
At one point at this event I was speaking to a lady when I noticed her glancing behind me, I looked around to see a queue of 4 people standing patiently waiting to speak to me, Mike had obviously been very busy "promoting" me. I did panic at first on who to talk too, thinking the rest will go away if I ignored them, but I got around this by handing out business cards to all of them and promising to come back to them in turn over the next 20 minutes.
I will consider and refine this idea more for future use; you should try this as well as it can be very powerful, but be careful you don't come across as too well rehearsed or "pushy".
Referral Marketing Calculator: To see how much potential referral business you can gain through having a referral marketing programme go to
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